- January 28th, 2022
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"Bike lanes often only look empty because they are efficient."
Danish urban planner urbanthoughts11 demonstrates the point with a video from Anders Adamsen on Twitter this week showing an urban streetscape in Copenhagen where the bike lane more often than not looks relatively empty – especially when compared to the amount of cars seen traveling the adjacent roadway – despite the bike lane actually moving 8 times as many people on bikes than the adjacent roadway moves by car each day.
Visualizations like these help to demonstrate how easy it is, thereby, to overlook or fail to realize how efficiently well-designed multimodal infrastructure can move people into, around, or through urban centers like Oakland by providing equal access for those who walk, bike, drive, carpool/vanpool, ride transit, use an assisted mobility device, or utilize micromobility devices like an e-scooter.
Videos like this one are a good reminder that multimodal infrastructure like dedicated bike lanes or dedicated transit lanes like those here in Oakland are often moving large volumes of people so efficiently that they often simply seem to be unoccupied.
